Author Comments

Alight is a platformer that mixes exploration and reflexes and more than a little story. Move with the arrow keys, fly with the space bar or up arrow. If you find yourself having trouble getting much altitude, trying pressing the space bar at a slower pace until you find the right rhythm. And remember that you can always drop down out of a flock of birds without using a flap of your wings with the down arrow key.

Every time you enter a door, your game is automatically saved, and you can replay a level at any point.

If you're amazed by the music like we were, you should check out Smiletron, who made the song -- he has a web site at smiletron.org and more songs at 8bc.org/members/SMILETRON

Reviews

Rated 3.5 / 5 stars2011-08-04 04:34:59

Rated 3.5 / 5 stars2011-08-04 04:37:22

Beautiful but flawed.

This game tortures me. It is a truly BEAUTIFUL concept, but the execution just leaves so much to be desired.

The story is great. Introspective, intruiging, well written. The atmosphere is great, the worlds you have built are uniquely disparate, pockets of familiarity tied together in a trail of memories, much like how dreams themselves are structured.

The only killer is the gameplay. It's just dreary.
The flight mechanics give no feeling of freedom. Flight that only lets you flap three times and glide? What little freedom they do give you ends up being a curse when you bring in the claustrophobic challenge sections. All it is is basically a triple jump with some lowered gravity. If you wanted to achieve true freedom through gameplay to match your premise I would have gone for a secondary 'flight' system on top of the 'triple jump' style.

The 'true' flight system would be ineffective if you tried to use it during some of the more delicate platforming sections, but would help immeasurably to open up the world and really hit home your concept of 'freedom from memories'. You could control it simply, up to flap your wings, down to dive, left and right to move respectively. All you would have to integrate would be a guide system to the next cluster of memories in the form of a trail or an arrow.

In reference to the art style, I would have gone for less bright, retro colours. I know that retro was your intention, but a greyer pallete would have helped bring out the atmosphere and mood a little more.

I loved your game 'Where We Remain'. It was poetic, beautiful, intruiging and full of secrets. This is in the same boat. It really ties in with your name and what you stand for. But it brings the flaws with it too.

Not every game has to innovate, but every game must be entertaining. It must constantly introduce new elements to keep the game flowing and keep it from becoming dreary. Combat does not work in this case, but if you introduced more challenges to your flight mechanic or introduced sporadic 'nightmare' points where the dream-scape shifts and distorts (a concept hinted at with your current model)

Rated 3.5 / 5 stars2011-08-05 07:42:08

&quot;Keep running&quot;

I'm sort of disappointed in this game. I mean, it's good, REALLY good, but it has a lot of things bogging it down.

First off, let me say I in no way hate this game, it's just imperfect. The controls are too (for lack of a better word) floaty, making control imprecise, especially when using air gusts. The first jump is so weak and uses up a bit of your energy, too, its hard to ascend with, only good for the rare chances of gliding horizontally. Also, the "shadow barriers" are sort of erratic and hard to judge when one is going to hit you. More than once I've barely touched them only to die and be warped back to the start.

That's another thing: There really aren't enough checkpoints. The last level and the clock tower were real pains because if you felt a little adventurous and deviated from the path, you'd often get stuck in a dead end with little flight power to save you, die, and get booted right back to the beginning.

You obviously have a story to tell, something I REALLY love about indie games like this, so it really pains me to say that the story just isn't well told. I mean, I still got what was going on, but more reflective level layouts that reminisced about the past (like the clock tower level or the university level) would have set the more somber mood that you strive for, something that makes us think and reflect.

On the positive side, this game made me look at its levels very thoughtfully in ways I haven't before. Soon, I was thinking about the "shadow barriers" that would come when I picked up that feather. What would this gust of air be a part of? Is every flock of birds used in my return to the pedestal? What paths will the shadows lead me on? You got me thinking in a way few games have, so to that, I say Bravo.

The graphics are good and the music really reflects the "airy" feel of it all, so they get a gold star in my book. I few more pensive and quiet tunes wouldn't have hurt, though. During the clock tower level, light and dreamy music does not fit the mood.

This game made me think, something that's hard to pull off in a game, which is way it pains me not to give it a higher score. In the end, a game is about gameplay, and its gameplay is imprecise and floaty. A little more refinement on that and the story, and you'll have a gem. Otherwise, A for effort, D for execution.
7/10

Rated 3.5 / 5 stars2011-08-16 07:34:46

Rated 3.5 / 5 stars2011-08-02 16:01:24

Beautiful Story, Frustrating Gameplay

I thought it was a beautiful story, and the variances when you select the different items gave it a nice replay value. A lot of the times though I found myself out of the story because I was frustrated with some of the navigation puzzles. The difficulty needs to be pulled down a little to add more focus on the story, because I think that is what makes this piece strong.